in the low sunshine as they seemed to disappear into the depths of Dudley Castle, which stood sentinel over this thoroughfare into the town. Trams rumbled past with workers packed tight, while others, preferring to take in the summer evening, walked home. Ned climbed over the stile into Brewery Fields before Clover and courteously handed her down when she clambered over it.
‘When are you finishing then?’
Clover shook out her long cotton skirt and continued walking. ‘Friday. I told old Ratface Mason today.’
‘What did he say?’
‘What could he say? Oh, he said he didn’t want me to go, but he could tell I’d made my mind up.’
‘Did he offer you more money?’
‘It wouldn’t make any difference if he did. I’d be mad not to take this offer of shop work. It’s less money, but shop work is what I’ve always wanted. I hate working in filth.’
‘But I shan’t see you, Clover,’ Ned complained. ‘We’ll lose touch, specially now you’re courting him.’
‘Don’t be daft. You know where I live. You can always come and have a drink. I’ll always be glad to see you.’
‘If you could find time on the nights you don’t see him you could still come and help me with the Gull, if you wanted.’
Clover disliked the resentment Ned always manifested for Tom in the scornful tone he used when he said ‘him’. It was unjustified, but she let it pass. ‘If you still want me to, I will. Tom won’t mind, you know. He’s not an ogre.’
‘Would you tell him?’
‘’Course I’d tell him. He knows I helped you before. He admires what you’re doing. He says he’d like to take some more photographs when you go flying again.’
‘I don’t want him taking any more photos, Clover. The last ones he took he sold for five guineas. Julian Oakley, the reporter from the Herald told me. It’s as if he’s pinched all my work and he’s the only one to get paid for it. If anybody should be making money from photos of me and my Gull, it should be me. The money could go towards an engine.’
Clover was taken aback. ‘Is that why you resent Tom? Is that why you’re always so scornful when you mention him?’
‘Partly. I resent him most because he’s got you, though. You know how I feel about you – how I’ve always felt about you…But he suddenly pops up from nowhere and sweeps you off your feet.’
Clover sighed, feelings of guilt over Ned returning. ‘I can no more help how I feel than you can, Ned,’ she said gently. ‘It doesn’t mean I don’t care about you.’
Further conversation seemed superfluous after that. So they climbed St John’s Road in silence, past the vicarage and its vast garden, almost as big as the churchyard. The forge opposite the church was still working and the great thud of forging hammers shook the earth beneath their feet. Workmen with dirty faces and dirtier hands drifted into the Freebodies after their shifts for a drink before they went home, as they would be doing at the Jolly Collier.
‘Aren’t you going up Price Street?’ Clover asked, at last punctuating their wordless silence, for at this point they normally went their separate ways.
‘No, not today,’ Ned answered defiantly. ‘I’ll come and have a drink at the Jolly Collier. I can say hello to Ramona.’
Clover cast a concerned glance at him. ‘Won’t your mother wonder what’s happened to you if you’re late?’
‘I’m not a little boy, Clover.’
She glanced at him. No, he was not a little boy. He was a man, full-grown. Yet he was perilously immature in so many ways. He lacked the experience of requited love, had never known the joy, the pleasure, the richness it could bring…or the agonising heartache. He had not experienced the intense, uncontrollable emotions that prompted rational people to behave in totally irrational ways. Maybe he had not known desire either; he had never said.
Ned obviously knew jealousy. But jealousy was not the same as being in love; it was an unwelcome bed partner of love. Clover had experienced jealousy over Ramona when she believed she had taken Tom from under her very nose. It was a cruel state of mind, an injured lover’s hell. She wanted no more of it, so she sympathised the more with Ned.
But desire…?
Clover at last was beginning to understood how a timely kiss, exquisitely delivered, could stoke up enough desire to allow you to throw caution to the wind. Desire could turn your world upside down, could make you wanton. She desired Tom now. Ever since those delectable moments on Sunday afternoon when she had lain naked with him on his bearskin, she had been unable to concentrate on anything else. Ever since she’d felt that profound tenderness and exhilaration, which had fuelled the need to give herself utterly in the name of love, the reliving of it in her mind had consumed her. Yet it had been over all too soon. She longed for that absolute and total intimacy and gentleness to last and last. Although spiritually, she had been content, physically she was left still tingling, instinctively wanting more, requiring more. There must be more to it than what she had experienced that first time. But what she’d had was enough to whet her appetite for the next time they lay together on his bearskin – and that would have to be tonight. Whether it was his intention or not, it was hers. The thought made her pulse race.
‘It’s bloody scandalous, the price of an ’undredweight o’ coal,’ Noah Fairfax complained to the man sitting on the adjacent stool in the taproom of the Jolly Collier, which was buzzing with laughter and a dozen assorted conversations. ‘I’ve just bin to fetch a load in me barrer and I couldn’t catch me breath when old Ma Poxon asked me for the money. One and threepence ha’penny her charged me.’
‘Blame the miners,’ the other man, Urban Tranter, said and noisily slurped the froth from the pint Ramona had just placed on the table before him. ‘They’m forever on strike. Swines. Never satisfied, them lot. Coal’s bound to be scarce.’
‘Scarce?’ Noah queried indignantly. ‘Rockin’ hoss shit’s scarce but nobody’s asking one and threepence ha’penny a bloody ’undredweight for it.’
‘But nobody wants to burn rocking hoss shit, Noah. Trouble is, when coal gets scarce, the price goes sky bloody high.’
‘So what they oughta do,’ Noah said, withdrawing a tin of twist tobacco from his jacket pocket, ‘is let them saft Suffragettes go down the mines when the miners am on strike.’
Ramona returned to the table. ‘Your change, Mr Tranter.’
‘Ta, my lover,’ he said and pocketed it. Urban chuckled at Noah and nodded his agreement as he dipped his nose into his pint mug.
‘Yo’ can loff, Urban, but if them Suffragettes want the vote like a mon, then let ’em get down the pits and dig coal like a mon.’ Animatedly, he rubbed a knob of tobacco between the palms of his hand to break it into smokable strands. ‘Then they might get a bit o’ sympathy from the likes o’ you and me. Eh, Urban? Then we might get
